Nintendo Life eShop Selects (December 2025)

Honourable mentions

We don’t think anyone was expecting the amount of game releases we got in December 2025. Usually, the end of the year is a little quieter, but we were kept rather busy in the run up to Christmas.

Of course, there are two bigger games we haven’t had the chance to review yet — Stardew Valley: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition dropped on Christmas Day in the US, and we’re working on covering that very soon. And Cast n Chill, which (now-former) Nintendo Lifer Felix ranks among his favourite games of the year, also slipped through the cracks of a busy festive period.

That leaves us with a total of eight games that scored an 8//10 or above that are eShop exclusives (at the time of writing this). Here’s the five that didn’t quite make the top in a closely-fought battle of votes:

Trust Tribute Games to give us a near-perfect Marvel beat ’em up in the same vein as TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. And that’s exactly what Marvel Cosmic Invasion is — not only a love letter to Marvel’s rich comic book history, but a beautiful and excellent arcade side-scroller.

The roster is surprisingly robust and varied here, with every character feeling extremely distinct. And with the tag-team mechanic, you can play through the game multiple times with your favourite pairings and change things up as many times as you want. Add in the unlockable hard mode, and you have your new favourite co-op experience with a friend.

Available on both Switch 1 and 2 — and fantastic on both platforms — we scored the game an 8/10.

Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.

Surprise! Speeding onto Switch 2 at the end of the 2025, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is finally fully realised on the newer console. Yes, it is getting a full physical later in 2026, but right now, this is a digital-only purchase or upgrade.

Thank goodness for this port, too, as CrossWorlds really struggled on the older hardware. Here, it’s beautifully smooth with sharper resolutions and 60fps in both docked and handheld mode; all the other excellent bells and whistles are in tact, meaning this excellent racer can stand alongside Mario Kart World as one of the system’s best, at least in the early days.

The Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds scored an 8/10 from us, and there’s more free content and DLC to come in the future.

< Nintendo eShop Selects – November 2025

Do you agree with our ranking? Tell us about your favourite eShop releases of last month by voting in our poll and sharing your thoughts in the comments.

How we decide our eShop Selects top three: As we reach the end of every month, the Nintendo Life staff vote on their favourite titles from a list of games selected by the editorial team. To qualify for this list, these games must have been released as a digital-only Nintendo Switch eShop title in that particular month, and must have been reviewed on Nintendo Life; we select the qualifying games based on their review scores.

Staff are then asked to vote for three games that they think deserve to sit right at the very top of that list; first choice gets three points, second choice gets two points, and third choice gets one point. These votes are then tallied to create a top-three list, with the overall winner taking that month’s top prize.